James: The asynchronous approach is bettr. And yes; a bio of the Guest Lecturer attesting to his or her authority in the content area is of added value. I want to suggest that in addition to posting the bio, you also post, at a reasonable time before you want students to begin questions, a transcript of what the Guest lecturer would have said had he or she been delivering the lecture in the classroom. Allow enough time for students to read, assimilate, process the information, and come up with intelligent questions before you initiate the Discussion session. The results you would achieve in this manner is far more extensive than can be achieved when a Guest Lecturer comes into a traditional classroom setting, speaks for 45 minutes and only fifteen minutes remain for the question period. Satrohan